Scientists have discovered the most massive black hole in the universe to date, boasting a size equivalent to 36 billion suns.
It is located in the galaxy known as the Cosmic Horseshoe, five billion light-years from Earth.
This behemoth is at least 10,000 times heavier than the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way.
Astronomers say this is approaching the upper theoretical limit of what is physically possible in the universe.
Scientists believe that every galaxy in the universe contains a supermassive black hole at its core.
However, the largest galaxies of all could host even more colossal singularities called ultramassive black holes.
Although there could be even larger voids lurking out among the stars, this is the biggest black hole that researchers have measured with a high degree of certainty.
Co-author of the study Professor Thomas Collett, of the University of Portsmouth, says: ‘This is amongst the top 10 most massive black holes ever discovered, and quite possibly the most massive.’
Scientists have found the largest black hole ever detected inside a distant galaxy 5 billion light-years from Earth, and it contains as much mass as 36 billion suns
The researchers believe that this ultramassive black hole owes its gargantuan mass to the size of its host galaxy.
The Cosmic Horseshoe, where the black hole was found, is one of the biggest galaxies ever detected.
Professor Collett says: ‘We think the size of both is intimately linked, because when galaxies grow they can funnel matter down onto the central black hole.’
That means the larger the host galaxy, the larger the black hole at its centre should be.
However, the Cosmic Horseshoe is particularly interesting because it is what astronomers call a ‘fossil group’.
These colossal structures are left behind when an entire galaxy cluster collapses in on itself, crushing into a single large galaxy which progressively swallowed its neighbours.
‘It is likely that all of the supermassive black holes that were originally in the companion galaxies have also now merged to form the ultramassive black hole that we have detected,’ says Professor Collette.
‘So we’re seeing the end state of galaxy formation and the end state of black hole formation.’
The black hole was only detectable because of the way it distorted the light from nearby galaxies (illustrated) and how fast stars close to the centre of the host galaxy were moving
Even though this ultramassive black hole is absurdly large, it was actually extremely difficult for scientists to detect.
Scientists are usually able to spot very distant black holes when they are ‘accreting’, or consuming, matter from their host galaxy.
‘Some of this matter grows the black hole, but lots of it shines away in an incredibly bright source called a quasar,’ says Professor Collett.
These quasars release so much energy that they can be seen through telescopes on Earth and even prevent stars from forming in the surrounding galaxy.
However, this newly discovered black hole is ‘dormant’ – meaning it isn’t actively accreting any more matter or producing any tell-tale radiation.
Instead, Professor Collette and his collaborators had to rely on how the black hole’s enormous gravity affects the space around it.
According to Einstein’s theory of relativity, large masses bend and stretch the fabric of spacetime like a weight placed onto a trampoline.
Really massive objects like black holes and galaxy clusters bend spacetime so much that the trajectory of passing light bends as it passes through these curved areas.
Scientists say that the newly discovered black hole is 10,000 times more massive than Sagittarius A* (pictured), the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way
For example, the Cosmic Horseshoe, where this black hole was found, is so large that it bends the light from a background galaxy into a horseshoe-shaped structure.
Scientists call these Einstein Rings, and they are produced by a process known as gravitational lensing.
In a new study, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the researchers use this feature of space to work out how big the black hole should be.
Professor Collette says: ‘We detected the effect of the black hole in two ways – it is altering the path that light takes as it travels past the black hole and it is causing the stars in the inner regions of its host galaxy to move extremely quickly – almost 400 km/s.’
Measuring the movement of stars is considered to be the ‘gold standard’ for working out the mass of black holes, but it isn’t possible to do so accurately when a galaxy is so far away.
That means the researchers had to supplement their findings with a measurement of how the black hole warps the light around it to accurately estimate its mass.
‘By combining these two measurements, we can be completely confident that the black hole is real,’ says Dr Collette.
What makes this discovery so exciting is that these methods open the door to finding and measuring more black holes elsewhere in space.
What makes this discovery so exciting is that the supermassive black hole wasn’t actively accreting any more matter or producing a beam of energy known as a quasar (artist’s impression). This opens the door to finding more dormant black holes elsewhere in the universe
That could help researchers solve the puzzle of how black hole mass is related to galaxy size.
Lead researcher Carlos Melo, a PhD candidate at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) in Brazil, says: ‘Typically, for such remote systems, black hole mass measurements are only possible when the black hole is active.
‘But those accretion-based estimates often come with significant uncertainties.
‘This method allows us to detect and measure the mass of these hidden ultramassive black holes across the universe, even when they are completely silent.’
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